People have been talking for days about Harry Truman and 1948 and Executive Order 9981. That’s what happens when history repeats itself.

On Tuesday, the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was repealed, allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces.

For many in the local gay community, it was a significant milestone in their civil rights march. Significant because it was a long fight, and because it was the military.

That’s where Truman comes in.

Almost three years after the end of World War II, on July 26, 1948, then-President Truman signed Executive Order 9981, marking the beginning of the end of racial segregation in the military.

It took several years for full integration to occur, but the executive order helped pave the way for later advances, especially by African Americans, in almost every facet of life.

“As a symbol of a new national commitment to racial equality, the desegregation of that most ‘American’ of American institutions, the armed forces, was a harbinger of the civil rights revolution to come,” said Jerald Podair, a professor of history and American studies at Lawrence College in Wisconsin.

The same happened, to a lesser extent, after the role of women in the armed forces expanded in the 1970s.

Could the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” be that kind of tipping point?

That’s uncertain. While the military was ahead of the curve on racial integration, it’s behind the curve on gay rights, so any ripple effect through the larger society might be muted.

But local gays are optimistic.

“Military service is very much a part of what we brand as citizenship in this country,” said Bridget Wilson, an attorney in San Diego. “To no longer be barred from that — it’s a powerful thing.”

There were celebrations around the country after Tuesday’s repeal, including a rally that drew hundreds of people to the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in Hillcrest. Grown men in uniform cried.

One of the featured speakers was Stewart Bornhoft, a 64-year-old retired Army colonel who is gay. He led the crowd in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. For him and others, both inside and outside the military, this time it meant more, and the way they were almost shouting it at the end demonstrated their pride and hopes.

“I’ve been reciting those words since kindergarten, and it finally feels like they apply to me,” Bornhoft said. “With liberty and justice for all. I was part of that ‘all.’ ”

The double V

Parallels between what happened in 1948 and what happened five days ago can be striking.

“The arguments about whether gays would make good soldiers are much the same as the ones that were made about blacks in the Civil War and all the way back to the Revolutionary War, even before there was a United States,” said James SoRelle, a history professor at Baylor University in Texas.

“The question is, do we accept people who are willing to fight and die? With African Americans, it was a double-edged sword: ‘Do we want to arm the people we’ve treated as second-class citizens?’ And the other side of it was, ‘What if we arm them and they won’t fight? What if they turn and run?’ ”

African Americans resented such questions and pushed the White House to integrate the troops.

During World War II, many blacks supported what they called the “Double V” campaign, SoRelle said — one “V” for victory abroad, and one for victory in eliminating “the anti-democratic, second-class citizenship that most of them faced in Jim Crow America.”

There also were fears during World War II that gays could be more easily pressured to give up secrets during prisoner-of-war interrogations, SoRelle said. Lately, the argument has been that allowing gays to serve openly would disrupt morale and hurt efficiency — again, echoes from the concerns raised about integrating blacks.

Those concerns proved unfounded with African Americans. In 1944, Lt. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift, commandant of the Marines, said “The Negro Marines are no longer on trial. They are Marines, period.”

After Truman signed his executive order, it took two years for desegregation plans to be adopted and another three for almost all African Americans in the Army to serve in integrated units — and only then, some historian believe, because shortages of white troops during the Korean War accelerated the process.

Navy ships weren’t fully integrated until the 1970s.

But the momentum was unmistakable.

“It didn’t make the Brown decision inevitable, but it did make it possible,” said Podair, the Lawrence College historian, referring to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision ending segregation in public schools.

Which raises the question that many in the gay community have been asking since Tuesday: What has the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” made possible?

"Just one of us"

Historians are more comfortable with the past than the future, but SoRelle offered this guess:

“Following a period of either celebration or complaint from various quarters, the matter (of gays in the military) will disappear as a serious policy concern. And in a generation from now, most Americans will realize that … change can occur in the United States without destroying the very fabric of our nation’s institutions.”

Wilson, the lawyer, thinks one impact to watch for is in public perceptions.

“Having openly gay people in the military will create change, as more and more people see them and realize ‘Oh, you’re just one of us,’ ” she said.

Bornhoft, the retired colonel, agreed. He was working at West Point when women were first admitted there, and he saw attitudes and behaviors changing. Frat-boy antics gave way to respect, he said.

“Many people think they’ve never met anyone who was gay, or they have the stereotype of the limp-wristed sissy not capable of doing anything,” he said. “Now they’ll start to see people in uniform, serving in one of the most respected segments of our country, the military.

“They’ll see people who face the same challenges as they do, who are pursuing the same kinds of goals — raising a family, going to the mall, volunteering, coaching their kids’ soccer teams. All those things that make up the fabric of American life. And they’ll go, ‘Wow, maybe I’ve been wrong about this. Maybe my beliefs about gays aren’t valid.’ And as that happens, things like marriage equality will happen at an accelerated pace.”

Podair thinks waves from the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” will eventually ripple to that shore, making gay marriage the civil rights milestone that most people — and the history books — remember.

Key moments in the history of San Diego’s gay community=

1973: The Center for Social Services opens in Golden Hill.

1974: San Diego’s first Pride rally is held.

1974: Gay activists organize a protest at the Mission Valley May Co. department store following a police raid of a restroom there for alleged homosexual activity.

1975: San Diego Democratic Club, a political coalition of homosexual men and women, is founded.

1977: Larry Lamond, a former San Diego Police Department sergeant who spent 10 years with the force, announces that he’s gay after Police Chief Bill Kolender says the department had a policy against hiring homosexuals.

1979: Greater San Diego Business Association, an alliance of gay merchants, is founded.

1980: Dr. Brad Truax starts the United San Diego Elections Committee, a nonpartisan political action committee for the homosexual community.

1983: Shanti, later to become San Diego AIDS Project and now a part of AIDS Foundation San Diego, is founded.

1984: San Diego County AIDS Assistance Fund is founded.

1990: San Diego City Council passes Human Dignity Ordinance banning housing and job discrimination against homosexuals.

1990: Former FBI Special Agent Frank Buttino of San Diego sues the government for firing him because he is gay. (Buttino’s lawsuit sought his reinstatement and to overturn the FBI’s policy on gays. He reached a settlement with the agency over hiring issues in 1993, but did not get his job back.)

1991: Simon LeVay, a neurobiologist at the Salk Institute, publishes research linking homosexuality to specific neurons in the brain.

1992: The Lesbian and Gay Men’s Community Center opens on Normal Street in San Diego.

1992: El Cajon police Agent Chuck Merino sues the Boy Scouts after he was ousted as head of an Explorer group affiliated with the Police Department over his public revelation that he is gay. (In 1994, a Superior Court judge rules that state law prohibited the Boy Scouts from discriminating against Chuck Merino; in 1997, a state appellate court rules in favor of the Scouts.)

1993: The San Diego Unified School District bans Boy Scout activities from its campuses during the school day, saying the organization discriminates against homosexuals.

1993: Christine Kehoe becomes the first openly gay candidate to be elected to the San Diego City Council.

2000: A gay, cross-dressing man in San Diego is granted political asylum, the first time a federal appeals court explicitly recognizes anti-homosexual persecution as a basis for political asylum.

2002: District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis becomes the nation’s first openly gay person elected to a top prosecuting job.

2005: Ruling in a case involving a lesbian couple who sued Bernardo Heights Country Club in Rancho Bernardo, the state Supreme Court says businesses have to give registered domestic partners the same benefits extended to married couples.

2007: Mayor Jerry Sanders publicly changes his stance on gay marriage, announcing he will back a City Council decision to support same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court.

2008: 8,000 to 10,000 people march from Hillcrest to North Park behind a giant rainbow flag in protest of Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage in California.

2009: Carrie Prejean, a student at San Diego Christian College and finalist in the Miss USA pageant, answers a question about gay marriage and is catapulted into the national spotlight.